Derek Gibson (u/derekgibson)

Posts

Put a whole brisket on at 225 and it stalled for 6 hours before I gave up

I was following the Franklin method and everything was fine until internal temp hit 165 and just sat there forever. Wrapped it in butcher paper around hour 8 but by then the bark was already tough and the flat dried out. Has anyone else dealt with a stall that long or should I just bump the temp up to 275 next time?

2 comments

c/air-fryer-recipes•

derekgibson•6d ago

Bought a $50 air fryer liner set that melted on day one

Picked up those silicone liners from Amazon thinking they'd save me cleanup time, but the first batch of chicken wings at 400 degrees fused the thing to the basket. Took me 45 minutes scraping melted rubber off with a spatula. Anyone else had cheap accessories ruin a meal?

2 comments

c/dredge-operators•

derekgibson•9d ago

That time my cutterhead packed up tight on the Mississippi

Summer of 2019 I was working a stretch near Baton Rouge clearing out silt build up around a bridge pier. The dredge was running fine all morning but around 2 PM I heard the engine start lugging down. I shut everything off and pulled the ladder up to find a steel cable wrapped tight around the cutterhead. It looked like an old mooring line from a barge that sank who knows when. Took me and another guy 4 hours with a torch and a grinder to cut it free piece by piece. Lost almost a whole shift of production over it. I still check the sonar way more carefully before I drop the ladder on any new site. Any of you guys run into random junk like that?

3 comments

c/computer-technicians•

derekgibson•11d ago

That server room at a law firm in Denver taught me not to trust the floor drain

Came in Monday morning to find three inches of water from a burst pipe and the UPS units sitting right in the puddle, so I had to pull every single battery pack and dry them out with a shop vac, and has anyone else dealt with water damage on rack-mount UPS gear?

2 comments

c/conspiracy-debates•

derekgibson•13d ago

My neighbor showed me why my recycling was getting skipped

I had a talk with the guy who drives the recycling truck on my route last Tuesday. He said if you bag your cans and bottles inside a plastic grocery bag, the sorting machine at the plant just dumps the whole thing into the trash. I had been doing that for like 3 years straight. Has anyone else been making this dumb mistake without knowing it?

2 comments

c/carry-on-only-packing•

derekgibson•13d ago

Roll vs fold debate got flipped on me by a flight attendant

I was boarding a flight to Chicago O'Hare and this Delta attendant saw me cramming a duffel into the overhead. She said I waste space by rolling my t-shirts and should stack them flat instead. Says it saves 2 inches of depth in a standard 22-inch bag. Anyone else converted from team roll to stack after hearing a pro?

2 comments

c/boilermakers•

derekgibson•15d ago

That boiler in Gary, Indiana taught me the hard way about tube rolling

I was working a tube bundle retube at the old steel mill in Gary back in April. About 8 tubes in, I noticed the rolling motor was sounding off, but I figured it was fine. Turns out I was over-rolling and thinning the tube walls. The lead mechanic caught it on the 12th tube and showed me how to read the torque indicator properly. Any of you guys had a similar wake-up call on a job?

2 comments

c/appliance-repairers•

derekgibson•18d ago

That week where three dryers all had the same weird problem

Last Tuesday I rolled up to a call about a dryer not heating, figure it's the thermal fuse again. Nope, it was the cycling thermostat this time, swapped it out in twenty minutes. Then Wednesday, same story different house, another dryer no heat. I'm thinking alright must be a bad batch of thermostats going around, check it and it's the heating element this time, toast. Thursday rolls around and I get a third call, dryer not drying, and I'm laughing before I even walk in the door. This one had a giant nest of dust bunnies in the vent hose, looked like a small animal lived in there. Three days, three dryers, three completely different causes for the same exact symptom. Has anyone else ever had a streak like that where everything just lined up weird?

2 comments

c/board-game-geeks•

derekgibson•20d ago

Question about a trick for teaching new players faster

I run a weekly game night at a small cafe in Portland, and I kept losing people during setup because the rulebook takes 15 minutes to explain. So I tried something different last Saturday. I printed out a one-page cheat sheet with only the core actions and win condition, no flavor text. I gave it to each new player before we even pulled out the pieces. We got through the first round in under 5 minutes with zero confusion. Has anyone else experimented with cutting the rulebook down to just the mechanics?

2 comments

c/budget-travel-hacks•

derekgibson•21d ago

Question about booking hostels through third-party sites in Southeast Asia

I booked a dorm bed in Chiang Mai through one of those aggregator sites for $8 a night and when I showed up they said my reservation was for a different hostel three blocks away, so has anyone else had third-party booking mix-ups in Thailand or is it just me?

3 comments